


Kriegspiel

by Zietegeest



Category: the Queen's Gambit
Genre: Chicken (game of), F/M, Hook-Up, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, Power Dynamics, Sex, Sexual Tension, Smut, Strip Chess, Strip Games, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 09:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zietegeest/pseuds/Zietegeest
Summary: If Beth hadn't gone to the student union in Forks/Ohio, and Benny had come to her room instead.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 56
Kudos: 657





	Kriegspiel

Beth has her night neatly laid out before the knock comes at her door. 

It consists of a pill and a few quiet hours to herself, preparing for the next day’s matches and getting lost in the vacant freeway of her mind, running through possibilities and detaching from the room she’s currently sat in. 

The room itself isn’t particularly offending her - it’s plain, small and mostly empty - but decidedly lacking in stimulation. The whole building holds a very temporary feeling. Not a space that anyone truly lives in, but a place to pass the time before packing up and shipping off to someplace new. This temporary feeling is what encourages her plan. The sense that she’s not really here, and the temptation to stray just a little further out. 

Then three rapid fire knocks at the door, and she’s pulled back into the present. 

Her body turns towards the door, but she doesn’t go to it yet. Instead her eyes are shifting to her bedside table, looking at her plans. The small cylindrical case looks back at her. She’s not expecting anyone, and settles back prepared to ignore it, pretend to be asleep, or out, when the knocking picks up again. 

It’s incessant, impatient, and Beth imagines the sound has an annoyed quality to it, irritation at the threat of being ignored, and she sighs as she crosses the room. The rapping on the door is starting up for a third round now, and she has half a mind of who’s on the other side before she even pulls it open. 

In place of a greeting, the figure at her door simply lifts his brows into an entitled expression, surrounded by an air of _well you took your time with that,_ standing barely taller than she is and toeing the line between well groomed and seedy. Beth stares him down. World champion Benny Watts, and Beth is kicking herself for not ignoring him, and teaching him a lesson in self importance. 

“Hello Benny,” she says flatly. 

“Up for a few rounds?” Benny asks, and Beth’s eyes flash down onto the board he has tucked casually beneath one arm. 

“What happened to giving me an edge?” She says, planting her feet in the doorway and blocking his line into her room. Behind her, the desk lamp is painting the room’s walls with a soft amber light, and his sudden presence at the cusp of it is threatening the serenity. 

“Speed chess won’t give you an advantage,” Benny says easily, and leans into the opened side of her doorframe. 

“There’s no art to speed chess,” she levels. They’re eye to eye, and there’s a glint in his that’s catching the dim yellow light of the hall, playing with it. 

“Maybe not. But practice is practice,” he replies. “Besides, I want to see what you’ll do. I’ve studied your games,” he adds, and Beth cautiously creeps the door open a bit further. 

“And?”

“And you’re all attack. I bet I could teach you something,” Benny says, eyeing up the opening space and inching himself in towards it. The amber light of her room warps, bends around his shadow on the floor, and Beth feels slightly betrayed by it. 

“I’m sure,” Beth replies, dry and humourless. His position in front of her has a chatter of voices picking up in Beth’s mind, whispering behind her back at the implication of letting him into her room this late in the evening. 

“You can’t tell me you have better plans,” Benny is pushing, and Beth leans in to look around him at the stretch of hall. It’s empty. 

“A few rounds,” she caves. “But then I’m going to bed early.” 

Beth’s no sooner toed the door open another crack to grant him entrance when Benny is pushing through it, slithering out of his jacket and hanging it on her desk chair before depositing first the board and them himself onto her made bed. He makes himself at home on top of her comforter while Beth stares incredulously, reclining onto his side and propping himself up with his elbow, legs dangling to the floor. The end of her bed is left free, and he gestures her to the space amicably, setting up the board with one handed ease.

“So what’re we playing for?” Benny asks. “Five?” It’s a quick snap, a challenge, and Beth lets out another frustrated sigh. 

“Why do we have to play for something? Why can’t we just play to win,” she counters. 

“Fun, ever heard of it?” Benny replies evenly. 

“I don’t find getting swindled to be much fun,” Beth says back cooly, smiling in place of grinding her teeth. It’s still defiant, flat and unrelenting, but it’s almost a compliment too, and Benny tips his chin towards her in recognition. 

“Doesn’t have to be for money,” he amends, pointing his brow and aiming it at her. It feels like a setup, that testing light in his eye and she lets him bait her.

“What, then?” Beth asks, finding herself unreasonably irritated that he’s taken over her room and her evening so casually. It doesn’t feel too late to kick him out though, and she stands firm between him and the door, weighing her options. 

“How about clothes,” Benny says beneath the blankly even stare Beth is offering. “Ever play strip chess?” It’s not what she had expected him to say by a long shot, and the absurdity of it almost breaks the effort it’s taking to maintain an emotionless face.

“No,” she answers, caught off guard by the joke and answering plainly instead of returning his serve.

“Why Beth, it’s all the rage these days.” He says it with a spreading smile, a tone to his voice that’s over the top, eyes dark with scandal, and she almost laughs. He’s kidding - she recognizes it as easily as she recognizes his arrogance, his need to be the centre of attention, but there’s something in his words that has her pausing, reevaluating the sight of him on her bed. 

“What would be in it for me?” She deadpans, and Benny mimes wincing, a hand over his heart.

“You’re cold,” he says, and brushes off the charade. “Regular speed, touch move, winner gets the joy of winning and nothing else?” He continues, redirecting back to the board.

“What are the rules of strip chess?” She asks. Benny’s eyes flick off of the board then, looking her over. 

“I was joking,” he says carefully, punctuating his words with a few fast blinks and Beth blinks back at him, keeping up the act.

“You said you could teach me something,” she says, keeping her tone deceitfully innocent, laughing inwardly at the conflict on his face now. “I can’t play if I don’t know the rules.”

“Come on, Beth. I didn’t come here to proposition you,” he’s saying next, and as her defensive words had almost been a compliment, his are almost an apology. Beth’s gaze abandons his for a moment, flashing over to the cylinder on her nightstand, then traces back to meet Benny’s eye. Her room feels much more exciting now, alit with other options. The amber light has picked up, lifted into something sharp, like the bright flare before a bulb pops.

“Didn’t you?” She asks, folding her arms across her body and looking at him. From her standing position he has to look up to level her stare, and Beth notes that for the first time he looks less than comfortable with how much of her space he’s taken up. 

“No,” he says, and she can tell he means it. She watches as he picks the kings off the board, closes one into each hand and offers them to her. Beth thinks it might stand for an offer for friendship too, and she crosses the room, coming to perch on the edge of her bed, and when she sits she can see Benny relax again. She marks a mental note of how thrown he had been, then chooses left and pulls white. 

The game starts and the oddness of the hour and their lack of company dwindles. But Beth finds there’s a distinct curiosity remaining, moving like water, as if a pipe had sprung a leak inside her mind, and started to drip.

The first round is over as soon as it starts. Benny sacrifices half his pieces in the first minute and Beth finds herself stunned and staring when he has her in mate in twenty moves. 

“You play the long game with pawns, and that works when you have the time to stretch them out, but there’s no defence here,” Benny says as he resets the board and the part of Beth that wants to roll her eyes sits back and lets him talk for a moment.

“Your defence is your foundation. “ Benny continues. “Without that structure you’re left chasing bits of wood instead of having a well laid out plan come together. You need to go into each game with the confidence of knowing what your ending play will look like. The best strategy to have - ”

“I appreciate the feedback,” Beth says, cutting him off. “But I’ve already read your book. You don’t need to quote it at me.” While stopping him from talking had felt like the right move, the admission proves not to be as Benny looks at her smugly. 

“Maybe keep it in mind for this round, then,” he says, flashing out his king’s pawn, the clock already spinning down.

It strikes her in the same moment his white bishop knocks out one of her pawns just how much Benny reminds her of the piece. Tall and thin, always striking from an angle. Even now, the line of his body extended in a diagonal slash across the board from her. The way he talked to people, shoulder to shoulder, not looking at them directly but rather catching their eye from the side, suddenly and intense. 

And as she lets her rook out to join in and cut off the bishop’s path she sees it - her solution to the parts of him she finds so insufferable, especially without any others to help deflect his intensity. Something to cut off his angle with a forward strike.

“Again?” Benny asks, the corners of his mouth twisted up at his latest victory, and Beth has her plan, bedside pills banished into an afterthought, drowning in the amber light. 

“No,” she says, letting her fingers reset the board delicately. 

“Come on,” Benny says, stretching his arms and crossing them behind his head. “You really that intimidated?” It’s taunting, slimily confident and Beth can’t stand it, even as he carries on towards her trap. It’s said in tone he uses to egg people on or step over them. It’s the same inflection - a threat from the diagonal - and she can feel the surging need to match it, to threaten it right back. Like offering up a spare knight down the centre board, curious to see what will happen. 

“Teach me how to play strip chess,” she says, laying down her offering and sitting back, posture giving nothing away. The dark of Benny’s eyes flashes onto her, moving in a rapid search across her face. She knows the look; it’s pattern seeking. 

“You’re funny,” he says dryly, but his words seem flatter than usual, like his throat had gone dry to match, and he’s clearing it next as if he could read her mind. “I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work,” he adds in a swift recovery.

“What am I doing?” She asks, opening her expression into something close to earnest wonder. He blinks at her, and as she watches a layer seems to lift from his eyes, and she nearly laughs, nearly backs down. He sees something - a thread of her bait - and sits up, returning her look with something too fierce to be level.

“Please. Trying to throw me off with a distraction so you might win a round? I thought the Kentucky state champion might be able to hold her own without any tricks,” he says, the words coming out like he’s annoyed, although he’s sitting up and leaning in towards her. It’s something she feels she could interpret as another challenge, a reclaiming of control, but something else is whispering in her ear, urging her to push it further, see how many layers of that structured foundation she can drill through.

“A distraction?” She laughs. “You’re the one who came to my room, Benny. You’re more than welcome to leave now.” Benny stares at her, and she tilts her head just slightly to one side, a nod towards the door, the hall outside, watching the realization flicker darkly into his eyes. It’s a stalemate. Truce - and the way he checks his posture, stiffens his spine and spreads his hands against the mattress she knows he’s not going to take it. 

“You really are intimidated,” he says next, and there’s a slow smile crawling across his face. But the conflicted look on his face is too fresh in her mind for her to buy it. She can still see the movement through his eyes, like a smaller, scowling cousin of astonishment, and she finds she wants to see it again. 

_“‘Intimidated’?”_ Beth recites, keeping her tone sarcastically demure and angling her posture forwards on the bed. Reaching an arm past the board, she lowers a hand towards Benny’s left thigh, gently tracing her fingers through the space above the material. Benny freezes, his eyes trapped in hers, and she pointedly lowers her gaze towards her hand. It slides down to cover the leather sheath of his knife, and in a silent ripple she folds her fingers over the hilt. Then, moving her gaze back up to Benny’s face, she watches as the line of his eyes settles onto her hand. 

“This is the most intimidating thing about you.” She keeps her tone basic, observational, and runs her thumb across the rounded end of the handle. “If anyone needs telling off for being too aggressive, it’s not me,” she says with a shrug, withdrawing her arm now and sitting back to straighten the pieces on her side of the board. She looks back up to gage Benny’s expression. He hasn’t moved a muscle, arms supporting him stiffly and eyes burning back towards her.

“What?” She asks, as if it had been a perfectly ordinary exchange.

“What’re we doing, Beth?” He asks, voice low and meticulously neutral. 

“You’re teaching me the rules of strip chess,” Beth answers. “And I’m learning something from you.” 

She has him backed into a corner, and as simply as she could have refused to let him in, she waits, watching to see if he’ll take the option to back down, or forfeit. She would have just dropped it, lost a few more rounds then turned in if he hadn’t been as amused with her irritation, so blasé towards his own ego in a crowd. So now she sits, steels herself and waits to see if he’ll brush it off, or play into the possibilities with her. 

“Traditionally,” he starts, balling one hand into a fist at his side and talking to the board, not her. “Pawns don’t count, and losing a rook, bishop, or knight equals losing one article, and queens are two.” 

“Sounds simple enough,” Beth says agreeably, and Benny looks back up to her.

“And if it’s speed, then each checkmate takes something off,” he finishes. He’s practically growling, cross that she’s managed to goad him into an explanation, and how what was supposed to be his joke, his idea and his instigation had been so deftly twisted into her hands.

“Shall we?” Beth says next, neatly outlining the set board with her fingers. Benny doesn’t answer straight away, instead choosing to read the angles of her face. He’s looking for her bluff, she notes, and poses like his gaze is a camera lens. He seems to find something on her face, and straightens up, moving to hover over the lever on the clock. 

“Fine,” he says, and raises an eyebrow at her, hand ready. She looks back at him evenly, watching for any tells in his stance. A double bluff? A counterstrike? She’s not sure, but she can still see the uncertainty stitched beneath the shape of his jaw. Whatever it was he decided he found on her face was threatening enough to spur him into the game, as if she had worked her way into his head, burrowed and made him itch. She gives a slight nod of her head, and he hits her clock. 

It takes him eighteen moves this time, and Beth catches the hesitation in his hand before he goes for the finishing position. He seems to still as she rotates a click from her neck, then reaches a hand up.

She exaggerates the movement of removing the stopper of one of her earrings, pulling it off and placing it primly on the mattress alongside her fallen pieces. Benny’s face is unreadable when she returns to the board, relining her pawns and after a beat he mirrors her. 

The next round is over just as quickly. 

“We started with you wearing more than me,” she says as she removes her second earring. He glances away from the board for a moment to look at her. She knows that he’s well aware. Setting her earring next to the first one, she watches his hands as he resets the board. It takes longer this time.

“Does that give you the advantage, or me?” She asks next, and Benny doesn’t reply, just clenches his jaw and she watches the pulse of the muscle with amusement. 

Content to spend the night confined to her rented room, Beth hadn’t put her shoes on, or socks. Benny had crossed the campus to track her down, dressed for the night outside - although she’s willing to bet he would have still had the layers and long coat if it had been two in the afternoon. From where she’s seated she can count at least seven parts of his wardrobe, while she was already down to four. And, reflecting on the bits of her jewellery placed on the comforter, she doesn’t suppose those were really meant to count. They did though, with her own impromptu rules that he hadn’t protested, which brought his number up past ten. 

The next game doesn’t drag on, but considerably outlasts the first two as Benny begins taking a fraction longer to pretend to think before making his choices. Still, Beth finds she doesn’t stand a chance against the clock. No time to be methodical, or to strategize, and she can see the end of the line before it hits. 

He has her pinned in two moves. She can see it, knows he sees it too. There’s nothing to be done, not with the hand on the clock falling the way that it is. What irks her the most about it is that he’s right. Her queen and queen’s side pawns had torn the centre open, giving her blocking options and bringing down most of his pieces, but now her king and corner rook had been blocked in turn, and she didn’t have the time to get them out of it. Her defence simply wasn’t there - not built up fast enough, and her strategy hadn’t granted her enough leverage to move around his plan. His plan for the round, at least. Her plan for the outcome remained the same, and now, curious to see his next move, Beth sits back. 

Benny pushes a pawn forward, and she frowns, suddenly reevaluating the board. The pawn’s path led to a dead end, blocked by her king at her righthand corner. Not seeing an alternate route, she sweeps her queen in, cutting through his black bishop, snaps the clock. 

Across the board from her, Beth’s surprised to find Benny wearing a look she’d never seen before. He looks almost nervous, brows furrowed, and his next move is him moving the same pawn forwards. _He’s drawing the game out,_ she sees with a start. She cuts in with her next piece, this time her rook, and crosses it through the path of his queen, challenging her with no backup. Benny barely looks at it, and simply hops his king over a square, leaving it open on the right side. 

For a beat she’s incredulous that he’s allowed her to do it, and in the next breath she’s annoyed, because that’s exactly what he’s done. Allowed her, and it feels unfair, not quite aligned with cheating, but decidedly poor sportsmanship, and when she puts him in checkmate in the next two moves he looks almost relieved instead of angry or defeated. He snaps the clock off and Beth looks at him sullenly. 

“You got me,” he says, and Beth has the notion that he’s enjoying her disappointment almost as strongly as she’s feeling it. 

“Is that what happened,” she says without inflection. Benny shrugs easily and gestures to the board. The king looks up at her from where it’s fallen. It’s a helpless thing, given up without a fight, now crushed under the heel of her queen.

“That’s you,” she says, flicking it with her finger, giving in to a childish sense of vindication. Across the board, Benny is looking at her, expression open like he hadn’t been prepared for her to look back at him in that moment. Then he’s shaking his head slightly like he’s trying to clear his mind, or dispel some encroaching thought. 

“Take it off, then,” Beth says next, flicking the king with added vengeance now. “Catch up.” And Benny unbuttons his top layer with a mild glare that Beth can tell his heart isn’t behind. 

He throws the next two games as well, despite Beth’s best efforts to get a rise out of him with her challenging, baiting moves. She thinks at least he’ll snap and say something about her blatant lack of defence - by the second round he blunders through she’s purposefully using less blocks and tactics than she’d normally form - but he doesn’t. Merely lets her take his queen, check repeatedly, only making a few halfhearted swipes at her pawns and knights.

“This is just pathetic now,” Beth says, realigning their pieces while Benny toes off his second boot on the floor. He changes position before hitting the clock again, pulling his legs onto the bed to sit crosslegged. The casual seat, as well as his shoes at the side of the bed strike Beth as significant in that moment. More of a statement that he’s committed to the evening, not about to bolt from their game, and she feels a ripple move through her. A new range of possibilities flaring out for her to chase down and explore. 

“You’re quite the charmer,” he says, voice sardonic, and she has to laugh. 

“I really doubt that you’ve spontaneously entered the longest losing streak of your life,” She says, and Benny lets out a rough exhale. 

“What do you want from me?” He asks, and while it’s too darkly riddled with his haughty nature to be perfectly genuine Beth pauses at it all the same. 

“I want you,” she starts, reaching over to switch his side of the clock and push her first pawn forward, “to play me like you’d play me if this was just speed chess.” His clock is counting down, pieces untouched, but he doesn’t look down at either of them. His eyes are moving across her face, her eyes, as fast as darting fish beneath the water. 

“Otherwise how am I supposed to learn anything from your mastery?” She adds, letting sarcasm take a bite of her words. 

“So you want me to beat you,” he says flatly, sliding a pawn forward without looking at it. 

“If you can keep it up,” Beth fires back.

“You know I can,” Benny says, and under the watchful light of her desk lamp, the stillness of the night outside the window, Beth can see an intensity returning to him. A competitive bristle, not quite ready to bow. “So I beat you again. A few more times. And you get naked, then what?”

It’s a loaded question, an unbalanced tower stretched up into a storming sky. Beth feels it like a shiver that runs down her spine and settles in the nerves of her legs, as if a crackle of electricity has reached out from the ceiling, extending a forked prong between them and she finds herself leaning in to it - to the board, to him, to the strange unfolding nature of the night. 

She pauses, not wanting to admit that he had a point with his words earlier - the same ones printed in his self-congratulating book. She didn’t have a clear plan, a clear vision of her ending play. What she did have - baits, bluffs, and attacks vicious enough to destroy - she had plenty of. But an end game… her eyes move over the board, flickering with possibilities. What was her end game? 

“Only one way to find out,” she says, answering the both of them. 

She opens the next game, swiping at Benny’s clock and there’s a gap of silence when he doesn’t follow it up with anything. 

“Today,” she prompts, and Benny gives her another look she finds difficult to decipher as he matches her centre pawn. At first Beth falls into a Najdorf variation before snapping out of it, reminding herself with a sharp correction that Benny knows it, has beaten it on a personal level. She swings into another play - a sideways threat from d4. Across from her, Benny sits forward, elbow to knee and studies the board for a fraction of a second before responding. It’s familiar territory now. The slight pursing of his mouth, the assured way he drags his pieces draws Beth along with the motion. She surprises herself with how easy it is to slip into the game on the board, and almost lose sight of the one playing out between them. Only almost. The amber light is still consuming Benny’s outline, the pipes still tapping like a metronome at her temples. And the game plays out. 

Beth’s fingers freeze mid-move, a small thrill taking flight on silver wings inside her chest when she realized she’s missed another opening, leaving Benny’s knight free to swallow it. She looks away from the piece she’s holding - touch move, while she hasn’t pinned it anywhere yet she knows she has to - and looks at him. She can see his eyes tracing a fast line towards the move, can see the victory in his mind as easily as if it were her own. 

She can also see the way his breaths press against the plain black shirt he’s wearing. Can see the hesitation flicker from his eyes to his hand, his ring and middle finger trapped in motion like he’s repeating notes on piano keys. The melody sticks as he looks away from the board to her, and Beth can hear the keys, the metronome. It’s a fragility that’s contradicted by the weight of his stare, something Beth isn’t quite able to place. She watches it instead, wants to run it between her fingers, examine and name it. Then he’s moving his piece, capturing her last line of chance, and it’s over again. 

He taps the side of the board twice, three times before his hand falls onto the clock, switching it to neutral. 

“You need to work on your defence,” he tells her again, and Beth responds with looping her fingers beneath the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. She turns slightly, dropping it to the floor behind her bed. A ripple of goosebumps swim up her arms, painting seams down her sides and when she straightens back around Benny isn’t looking at her. He’s resetting the board and the light is tugging at his fingers, inviting them to play in the shadows of the squares. 

The feeling of the room comes back to her suddenly. The walls pushing out, the ceiling like static, like _you’re not really here_ and for a moment Beth thinks that she might just disappear into it, fade out like the wallpaper, and then Benny is looking up, the light is catching bright in his eyes, and his hand is shifting to the clock, posing a silent question. She holds his gaze, tests it, and when he holds it back she’s thinking that the steadiness of it deserves a trophy. Then she nods. 

Both of them down four pieces already, Beth thinks she’s starting to understand the appeal of betted games. The slot that speed chess took up in her brain felt altered, renovations being worked on, and what had existed as a waste of time, something with no pride or merit was gaining traction now, growing in risk and reward as they rushed their moves out. Beth lets her hands run her pieces up the board like it’s a chase of snakes and ladders, but Benny skirts up the rungs just as easily, his right hand like a mongoose attacking with boldness then waiting in a lethal hover at the edge, moving in to pounce in between the pieces. 

Even as she plays to win, she finds herself wondering how it’ll feel to lose again. How he’ll react, how she’ll feel in turn. It’s not something she can accurately predict yet, and there’s an excitement at the lack of foresight that she’s never felt before during fast games. There’s nothing to use as a tool to predict either - not when Benny won’t look up at her. His eyes stay in a rigid three spot rail - conversing with the board, her hands, her eyes, and not straying off course. She watches them in between moves, finding herself impressed more than anything in a begrudging, admitting kind of way.

Beth chooses her next moves as if the fine grooves between the squares are live wires, and there’s a spark setting off from within her body too. A churning, boiling kind of excitement that’s pinpointed in the hollow pit of her stomach. It feels dangerously impossible to ignore, like the compulsion to look down while standing on a high ledge. 

So Beth leans into the danger of it, and just as Benny comes sideways into the advantage, she shoots her queen up to meet him, offering it openly. It’s a high risk move that would have never worked without the time control, and she doesn’t bother trying to disguise her smile when Benny cuts through her queen then pauses, staring at the angle of her white bishop before hitting her clock, giving her an ill-tempered squint that only widens her smile. 

“Never thought I’d get you with something like that,” she says as her next two moves have her rallying her pawns, cornering his king, and he stops the clock, already resetting their pieces before she has a chance to underline her win. 

She clears her throat once the board is dressed, and Benny looks towards the sound. He looks at her expectantly, and she delivers it back with interest, dropping her eyes in a lunge across his body, and his mouth parts like he’s about to speak, but then doesn’t. Just blinks like he’s trying to clear a haze from his eyes, and in the silence his gaze leaves hers, travelling in a wandering line up the expanse of her torso before falling back to the board. Her pieces are staggered across his side like an arrowhead, forcing him into a surrender. A shallow wave of pride sweeps in towards Beth. She feels it wash over her like his eyes had, and she can taste the sin of it, the sharp notes in the flavour, and she savours finding not only a weak point in his play but one in his concentration too. She swallows down the waves as he peels the shirt over his head, baring his skin to the room, a sacrifice to the light. 

It’s the thin chains around his neck that catch her eye once his shirt joins hers on the floor. Disrupted by the removal they dance in a slight sway across the pane of his chest. Beth notes she’s not in any hurry to see him lose those. She likes the sight - they way the gold is collecting the amber of the lamp like it’s greedy for the light. Likes the way the shine is mixing with the lightning beneath her skin, intertwining there. 

The next game is over before it even takes off. Beth’s fifth turn has her hand moving too eagerly, and she curses the mistake as her fingers brush her rook. The rule grins at her - you touch it, you play it - and she knows he caught the motion too. Sighing, she’s forced to move the piece to the only available square. One wasted turn is a mortal wound in chess, and in speed chess against Benny it’s a death blow. Any other time she’d let it get to her, let it dig into her head and fill her with something raging, but now she lets it go, letting out a frustrated breath of air that dissipates. The room digests it quickly. 

She sees it again throughout their next series of moves - that conflicted look on Benny’s face, a shimmer of uncertainty that spreads down his body. Although his fingers know what to do with the pieces something seems to pull him from it, slowing his movements, stalling the game. She’s doomed though - knows it and accepted it the moment her finger hit the ridge of that rook, and as the game extends, the clock running out, she sees him grapple with accepting it too. 

The winning move is there. Beth can see his fingers itching towards it, but again, Benny hesitates. It’s a vulnerability - that hesitation of his hand - and something that he would have hunted down if it had presented in an opponent. Beth doesn’t hunt it down for him, just straightens her spine as he closes the move, and swings her legs back onto the floor. 

She stands up just long enough to shimmy the waistband of her pants down her hips, stepping out of each leg to leave the fabric in a soft heap on the floor. She can feel Benny looking at her without turning to confirm he is; she can feel the pressure like a springboard as he tries not too. 

His eyes are running down the line of her body, and Beth can feel that too as she rejoins him on the mattress. It’s a warm rush through her veins as if it had been his hands on her skin in place of his stare.

“Another?” Beth asks once she’s readjusted. Benny hadn’t reset the board this time, and the toppled piles of pieces on the comforter sit like crossroads. 

“Do you want to?” Benny asks, and she’s certain that it’s a first - someone else pushing for another round, betting against him, and him not leaping up to match the energy. 

“Do you?” She throws back, sitting forward to pull the black pieces from the bed, setting them on her side in a line that attacks him directly in more than one way. White to move first, but he still doesn’t. 

“Benny?” She says, watching the twitch of pulse at his neck. She can hear the beating of it inside her mind. It holds the rhythm of his fingers against the polished edge of the board, a soft percussion of wood and skin. She has him now - she can see it clearly. Ensnared in her room, facade in pieces on the bed, her calm as a storm as she waits for his move. And whether he puts an end to it now or sees it through until the end, she’s suddenly curious to know how he’ll act when he’s sat across from her in the tournament hall. Curious in turn for much more - she wants to know every angle he has, which ones are covers, which ones materialize later. 

The angle she can’t see anymore is the one that had annoyed her so much to begin with. The arrogance, the over the top entitled aura, and while she can’t say that she misses it entirely she does finds herself a bit surprised that it’s vanished without much fuss. 

“Call it a draw?” Benny offers next, and that surprises her too. In a flash she can see the end of the night closing in on them now - a potential end game, punctual and ready. The limited time on the clock feels fitting now for this to be the end. And as it plays out what strikes her the most is how he’s surprised her - how he didn’t brush it off with an attitude or surge in for a fast win. She gave him the cards to strip her down in more ways than one, and in the wake of it she thinks that maybe she owed him a slice more credit than she had offered. 

“I don’t do draws,” Beth says, running over this newly altered version of Benny in her mind. There’s more depth to it now, more layers now that she’s seen him without them, and finds it funny in a strange way. 

“But I do accept your resignation,” she adds. She extends her arm amiably across the board, waits for him to take it. The end game is swooping in now. In a moment Benny is going to rise from the mattress, dress himself and head to the door, and Beth’s room will return to its former state - empty, plain, and void of lightning, golden shimmers and percussion. But she did learn something, even something as insignificant as a glimpse at Benny’s real nature. 

Benny snakes his arm in to meet hers - and uses it to smack her hand to the side.

“I never resign,” he says, an undercurrent of heat bolted to his tone. Beth withdraws her hand, watching Benny set the board while she tries to contain the smile she can feel tugging at her mouth. A thin prickle runs up her spine like a thread trailing across her skin. Beth can feel a shift in the air as if the window had been cracked open, and the vastness of the night outside had come winding in. 

When she wins again she doesn’t bother trying to dampen her gaze as Benny threads his belt off and it slithers to the floor. There’s a brief pause before Benny throws his holster, knife attached down after it. Beth chases the motion - can still feel the shape of it sliding between her fingers. She hooks a thumb under the strap shifting from her shoulder, putting it back in place with a soft _snap,_ and Benny watches cat-like in the shadows. She can see the rise and fall of his chest dipping in shallow movements, and still that pulse at his neck, darting out against the cords. Beth wets her lips with her tongue, hears the soft click of Benny’s swallow, then the next game rolls out and sweeps them under. 

There’s an obvious take with his bishop to her centre pawn, but doing so would leave his king and queen too open for attack. It’s a clear cut move that Beth banishes as soon as she spots it; Benny would never slip up like that - until he does. And Beth’s fingers fly out to pause the timer the second Benny’s leave his bishop. 

“Did you do that on purpose?” she asks, and looking up at Benny she has his answer. He looks thrown, like he had flung the piece onto the floor instead of having moved it an inch across the board. 

“Fuck,” he says in a low exhalation, and Beth laughs once sharply, letting the time resume. 

“Check,” she says as her rook shifts over. 

“Yeah,” Benny says tersely, playing a counter move one beat too late. 

“Mate,” Beth follows, already drawing her pieces back.

“You don’t have to say it, you just sound cocky,” Benny snaps, and Beth laughs again. 

“Cocky, really. Coming from you?” She says, and Benny lets out a fuming breath before bringing his left hand to the ring on his right, twisting it around the finger contemplatively. 

“Well that would be a bit disappointing,” she says, eyeing the silver, watching it spin. 

“You know, if we’re playing properly then accessories really aren’t supposed to count,” Benny says back. He’s reevaluating her now, and something returns to his eyes as he does. A slight upturn of the corners of his mouth, a compression of his posture, leaning into his forearms, and Beth thinks _there you are_ without thinking why. 

“Do whatever you want, then,” Beth says in an exhale. “Just get on with it.” 

“Getting eager now?” He shoots back, making a show of pulling a sock down his ankle. 

“Think it’s only fair to lose the pair, making a blunder like that,” Beth says, mixing coy with cruel and twirling his king around her fingers.

“Fine,” Benny seethes. “So now we’re even.” 

“Are we?” Beth asks, and lets her eyes fall like water across his skin, soaking in it before returning his stare. The brightness of the light in Benny’s eyes looks sharp, looks painful. 

He destroys her again, crushing through her frontline in their next match. An almost instant loss, though just at the end she catches him stalling again. A heavy drag to the pieces that shouldn’t be there, and she has to resist rolling her eyes by the strained chivalry of it. It’s a sheer layer of morality that Beth doesn’t much care for. To her it’s filed away the same way nudity was - not something to be bothered by. And certainly not when it’s her skin, her night that Benny has imposed himself into. 

Beth sighs on her next exhale, reaching her arms to her back and drawing her shoulder blades together to unclasp the cream lace bra she’s been wearing. The sigh isn’t anything deep or frustrated, more so the reigning in of a laugh. It’s the easiest loss she’s taken - and a series of them at that, but it’s the almost afflicted look that Benny’s holding that she’s so amused by. Posture carefully constructed, unwilling to bolt, but like he’s still waiting for some joke to unearth itself. 

Her fingers meet at her back while her eyes meet Benny’s, and suddenly it’s as if he doesn’t know where to look - at the pieces on the blanket, the frozen time on the clock, the smooth lines of her bare legs, back down to his own - still clothed. Beth’s fingers pull together in a trained motion and the clasps unlock from each other. The straps skate down her arms and once it’s off her body the room feels unfiltered. The air unassuming, the fall of each breath unrestrained, and when Benny looks back at her she meets him with an unbothered expression as natural as her state. He sits in place, careful and composed, but Beth can see a sinking struggle, like he’s made of stone and treading water. 

She wins next in a violent and angular slaughter, and when Benny sees it, watches her topple his king, she’s filled not with pride or victory, but with a curious rush of something. Benny takes his loss with a quiet stillness across from her. She’s reminded just for a flash - it comes on in a wooded, overgrown drink of memory - of a fawn hidden in the underbrush. Something so unguarded that it’s banking on staying motionless, and she thinks that if she made the comparison out loud Benny might actually blush. Even now she can see how badly his composure had been fractured, like a simple move or outward reaction would shatter it completely. 

He’s already deflated in comparison to the ego-shaped man that had entered her room. Beth can see it clearly now - that by removing his layers he’s removing that protective defence he had been so insistent about. And as Beth watches, rapt, his fingers seem to stutter over the buttons.

There’s a cloudy silence taking over the room now - those voices that had chattered to her at his sight outside her door had been muzzled, banished so far out she can’t remember what it was they had sounded like. But the spreading haze is something familiar - something she would dig through nights and bottles to find, and having it descend between them Beth feels so close to free - that busy part of her mind unfiltered, unrestrained. Across from her, shedding another layer the opposite is playing out. Beth can practically hear the electricity buzzing through his mind, his veins too. And there’s another change when he’s discarded his jeans - an inward curve to his shoulders, the assured distribution of his weight lethally altered, and for a moment Beth almost feels sorry for him. Mostly though, what she feels is a pressure from somewhere inside her body, building up like the coil of muscle before the lunge. 

Beth sits back against the mattress as Benny sits back down. Her arms move out to her sides, and she leans back into them, the cross of her legs taking up a narrow line of space. It changes the angle of her body drastically, and for just a moment Beth can see herself painted in his eye, all skin and limbs with one thin stroke of satin. His lap is hidden in shadows beneath the crook of his arm and Beth doesn’t try to decipher the shape spelled out in fabric. Instead she looks to his throat, at the staccato jumping of his pulse beneath the skin.

“It’s your turn,” Benny says, and his voice is crushed and low and Beth has found the edge he had been so careful not to give her. In her mind she’s running her tongue along the serrated blade of it and it tastes like triumph. Rich like iron, like prize money. 

She wins the next game but it doesn’t feel like she’s conquered anything. Doesn’t feel like she’s played an adversary at all, but doesn’t gloat, doesn’t even chide him as the clock turns against him. His mind isn’t there - is lost in the same detour that Beth would drive herself to on purpose in the starved solitude of nights alone, and when he snaps out of it to reach up to the collection of chains there Beth stops him.

“Wait,” she says, halting his fingers from meeting the clasps at the back of his neck. “Leave it,” she says next, and there’s a change to the weight of his gaze then, like the darkness there is deepening. There’s a faint flush of colour on his face as he looks at her with the fast motion of his eyes. She’s seen this before - seen the way he reads a room, reads a board looking for an opening, flashy, fierce and charging to pull the moves from the mind across from him. 

But watching now she can tell that he can’t see hers. She’s shrouded in her own mind, hidden from him just a few feet away as they breathe the same air. 

“I think,” Benny says as the calculation fades from his eyes, melting into hers. “It’s fair to say that you beat me.” It takes pride to say it - what might be the last of his reserves. 

“And all I get is the joy of winning,” Beth says, accepting his pride, rolling it between her fingers, her teeth. “That’s a shame,” and the last trickle of that fierce bite drains from his eyes. Its wake leaves something open, something cautiously quiet, a weighted stare that goes past her, past him, and into the space between them. 

And she knows this part. Knows that in a moment he’s going to lean in towards her, kiss her, move his hands to her waist. The push, the shift. The soft weight of him rolling on top, the cushion of the mattress beneath her spine. She watches him, waits for it, thinking it’s not unlike waiting for the swift capture, the checkmate she didn’t avoid. 

But then she sees it - never really stopped seeing it. That hesitation. The soft tissue beneath the facade, the line of his throat. _He’s not going to kiss me,_ Beth realizes. The amber glow of the lamp is wrapping him up in front of her, blending like watercolour into the faint flush on his cheeks, his chest, the pink of his fingers. It’s not his capture - not his instigation. It’s always been hers. Her violence, her victory, and without looking away from him, she takes the board in her hands, pushes it to the side of the mattress, and she advances. 

When she closes the distance between their mouths Benny melts like wax against her lips. Hot and pliable, and she has to restrain herself from biting down into it. A sound catches on his next exhale, drawing out from his throat and she swallows it, feels it become hers.

Her fingers trace up the back of his neck, dragging through his hair, and Benny shivers. The ripple of motion spreads from his shoulders down his torso, and he curves his body forwards and towards her. Her bottom line of teeth catch his lower lip, scraping up as their bodies connect, and Benny sucks in a breath. The shifting of the mattress creaks as she leans into the press of his body, lowers herself onto his lap. Benny’s hands snag at her waist, and she flinches at the cold bite of his ring against her skin. 

The kiss grows then, flowers into a jungle and winds like vines between them. Beth shifts again, widening the stance of her legs and beneath her Benny relaxes into it. The wooden rattle of the discarded pieces beside them knocks against Beth’s calf. More percussion, and it joins the orchestra, becoming a language made of fluid motion, tongues and hidden teeth. Beth’s fingers are twitching to join the chorus, spinning down Benny’s chest, winding around his back to trace patterns on the bare expanse. 

Beth can feel something eclipsing in her mind, a stillness to the crowd of her thoughts like the space inside is thickening, foggy like a moor. Benny’s hands are moving now, unsure as if they’re lost in that same moor so she directs them, lining them to her chest and feels him press his handprints into her as she gets drunk on the smoothness of his skin. 

It all deepens then - the kiss, their movements, the night around them. Beth is finding that as soon as she explores another angle, stakes claim to a new patch of skin she only wants more of it. Wants the feeling of him pinned beneath her hips, wants more of those sounds, more of that pounding from within her chest to his, beating like war drums. 

And it doesn’t sit right - not amid the hunger of her heartbeats and the pieces on the bed - for Benny to not be naked. Meaning to remedy this, Beth slides her hands down to his waist, nipping into the elastic there and pulling, when Benny stops her.

“Beth,” Benny breathes out against her lips. “Beth, wait,” and she does, pauses and draws back an inch, feeling the press of his forehead against hers. His skin feels fever-hot.

“What?” She asks, soaking in the warmth from all their points of contact. Her thighs squeezing his outline, the splay of his hands at her hips. 

“I - ” and more shallow breaths line up between his words. “I didn’t exactly come prepared for this,” he gets out. 

“I know,” Beth says back. She can see him in her mind, flawlessly constructed at her door. She can see that version pulled to pieces before her now, raw and open and gasping. 

“No, I mean - I don’t have anything,” Benny says, fingers kneading against her hipbone like he’s stitching a receding into the flesh. “So if we could just dial things back before this goes any further…” Beth stills her fingers, drawn back into the structured part of her brain just long enough to acknowledge what it took for him to halt things. 

“Fine. So we won’t have sex,” she says, and burrows her mouth in to where his neck meets chest, feeling the sudden move run down the tense line of Benny’s body, the drag of air from his opened mouth fogging up her skin. It’s not quite disappointment that’s nipping at her now, but something closer to a formula, something mapping out the equation to puzzles in the dark. She laughs a little next - thinking that if he had come prepared, had expected this position she doesn’t think she would have let him in at all.

“Can I touch you?” Beth asks. Her hands are ghosting at the thin fabric covering him, filled with an agonizing drive of energy as if the tendons behind her fingers are connected to a car battery. The pitching fall of Benny’s chest presses against hers and she knows he’s not going to say no - might be incapable of such a feat now. He just nods against her, pulling her back into a kiss that spins out into something furious. 

Between their bodies, Beth’s hand is curling into the material and the heat is greater here, is pushing back with a ferocity to connect with her touch. The shape of Benny through the heat moves against her touch, shifting and reaching towards her like it has wants, an end game plan of its own, and from the angle, from within her, Beth can feel a responding want moving like a echo through her nerves. 

It’s not enough - the heat still trapped beneath a layer of fabric, and Beth slides past the material. Part of her is hoping that what lies beneath is burning hot enough to scorch her hand, and when she makes contact Benny pauses like he’s not sure what will happens next. Beth isn’t sure either, but doesn’t see any reason to let him know, and fills that vacant space with the movement of her fingers around him. Their kiss freezes for a moment and a soft noise passes from his lips into her skin like the shape of her winding fingers has coaxed it out of him. She decides - or the deep wrack of warmth and motion inside her does - that she likes the taste of it, wants more of that noise, and she seeks it out. 

Her fingers guide towards the soft press between her legs so each motion spreads from him to her like water soaking into cloth. Benny’s hands fly to her sides, pulling her close as an involuntary spasm rocks through him and into her where it breaks like the tide. And like the tide, Beth falls back, pulling away from his body. Benny’s body inches up to follow her, and she reaches out with both hands to rest on his shoulders, pushes him back. Benny goes down easily, but a question blurs through the dark of his eyes, hands looking unsure of where they belong, needling for a place to rest in his lap. Covering himself, and Beth decides she can’t allow it, and pulls his wrists into her hands as she spreads her knees to either side of his legs.

“What’re we doing?” Benny asks, a broken parallel to his earlier words. The soft yield of Benny’s wrists in her grip whispers his pulse into her hands and she settles near the bottom of the bed, taking in the sight of him on his back, breathing hard. 

“Something I’ve wanted to try,” Beth responds. She places his arms at either side of his body and uncovers him next. She can feel as well as see the quick inhale as the cool air of the room envelops him, and then she’s leaning in to replace it with heat.

Beth moves her mouth to cover him, and the flat of her palms swim in to feel the startled jump of muscle in his thighs. She presses down into the firm line of them, pressing out with her tongue too, and draws back slightly when Benny lifts up towards her. He’s back to laying flat a second later, breathing out a cursing apology that vanishes with another sharp inhale. 

Beth’s first thought is how it’s not like she imagined it, but those notions are soon devoured by the warmth still expanding from the pit of her. Soon what she had imagined is gone, made irrelevant by the real thing now gasping in a slow writhe against the mattress. She draws back to take a breath, sliding a hand in to cover the length while her tongue moves into the dip at the head. It’s a little bitter, like sweat and breath-stained skin, but the sound Benny makes is rich, a dark frequency that her body responds to with a heartbeat of its own between her legs and through her chest.

Breathing through her nose, Beth listens as the pitch of Benny’s changes, is broken down by her mouth and the soft drag of her palm, wet now as it slides. He reaches to her other hand - the one that’s calmly keeping him down - and squeezes his fingers onto hers like he’s searching for an anchor. Beth finds a pattern to match her breathing as Benny’s levels into something more choppy, and she’s wondering how many different sounds she can pull from him. Wondering in turn what varying lines of pressure she can trace onto his body, how many hours in a night. These thoughts expand, running together like borders out at sea until Benny is struggling in a way that’s away from the cove of her mouth and not towards it, and he’s asking her to stop in a tone that sounds desperate not to let her. She does stop - slides her hand away from the pulse of his cock to cradle hipbone, and looks up at him. He looks back unravelled and frayed, and the amber light is soaked and bathing in his pores. 

“Let me touch you,” Benny says, all breath and no power behind it, and Beth crawls back up to meet his mouth. There’s a darting pause before she moves in towards him and Benny is nipping at her waist with his hands, kissing her when she leans into the pressure. Beth’s body shifts, her shoulder bracing towards the mattress and Benny moves with her, turning until they’re both on their sides. Beth kisses him again, feeling the rush of air that leaves his lungs to stain her tongue. 

The arm not pinned between them shifts too, and when Benny slips his hand between her legs Beth imagines waves crashing into them, of a moonlit sea and all the fathoms underneath. The fabric feels as wet as the look of crushed velvet, and as Benny’s fingers pull across the material Beth is thinking that they might dissolve entirely, eaten by the saltwater, the tidal waves crashing inside her. 

It’s still not enough - not hot enough, not close enough - and Beth is raising her leg bent at the knee to lock it around Benny’s waist. The motion disrupts his mouth against hers and flattens their torsos together in a startling flash of warmth. Fire against steel, and Beth’s hips roll towards the clash as she pulses into Benny’s hand.

“Christ, Beth,” Benny is breathing against her neck, tilting her neck back with his mouth and she’s arching her back to press crushingly tight against him. The motion, the violence of her spine sends the chess pieces falling to the floor. They hit the ground and scatter, wood against wood, fingers against flesh and Beth gasps. It’s a ragged slash of air into her throat that has her gripping Benny’s shoulder, tangling in the chains pressing cold against her skin. 

His fingers moving in a rhythm that has fled the rest of him, content to stay carved flush against her and the feeling of him pressing between their bodies is an added rope of friction that Beth can feel everywhere at once. Every fractured part of the night is spinning now, bending in the amber light, the brightness of her breaths, the forgotten but still watching eyes of the cylinder of pills. Then those begin to fade, to distort amid the light and shadows too, washed over by the curling, tucking motion of the pads of Benny’s fingers, the fallen chess pieces. She can see them in her mind, still rolling into place on the floor, rocking like the curve of her hips are rocking into the tight line of Benny’s body.

Then Beth is coming - it surges like a deep and crimson crash of water carved inside her core, dark like the ocean and just as limitless. She can’t feel Benny breathing against her as she digs her nails into his wrist and holds him prisoner there, riding out the constrictions of her body locking around him like iron bars. She’s struck by it then - that tipping moment it changes from not enough to too much all at once, and as it hits there’s almost a stillness - the blank eye inside the destruction of a storm, then one last crashing wave punches through and Beth is crying out, something low and sharp and she pits her mouth into the pulsing line at Benny’s throat, biting down and tasting his skin between her teeth. 

There’s more heat now - this time a fluid bolt of it between them, high against Beth’s stomach and Benny is shaking, pinning them together as a stilted moan catches in his throat.

Beth can see it written on him when they pull apart - the reason he had been so adamant not to give her some edge to use against him. She can see it clearly on the dampness of his skin, the falling of his chest - all the places that edge had cut into him. Can see him torn and wounded by it, stuck by it’s point and bleeding out. She tries to make amends to that, kissing into the corners of his mouth, pushing into the tousled part of his hair with her nails. As the hour blends into something quiet, the pull at Beth’s eyelids becomes too heavy to resist, and she can feel the same edge dulling, retreating back inside. She gets the feeling as she watches him redress with half lidded eyes that he had run himself onto it voluntarily.


End file.
